Digital subscriber lines (“DSL”) provide high speed internet connections to subscribers. Typically, a phone company provides a DSL modem to a residential/commercial customer that is connected it their computer. The DSL modem, also known as a DSL transceiver, is then connected to the phone company's central office through a pair of twisted wires of the plain old telephone system (“POTS”), which is sometimes called the “last mile” or “local loop.” In addition, the phone lines for these residential/commercial customers may also be carried on the same pair of twisted wires. The voice and data signals are carried together on the twisted pair of wires to the central office (“CO”) of the telephone company.
The CO then uses a POTS splitter shelves to separate the voice and data signals. These POTS splitter shelves typically use low-pass and high-pass filters to separate and direct the voice signals and the DSL signals onto different lines. POTS splitter shelves may also be located at the customer's location. The voice signals are then routed through the POTS and the data signals.
The data signals from the many customers are aggregated with a digital subscriber line access multiplexer (“DSLAM”) that connects the multiple customer's DSL to a high-speed backbone line using multiplexing techniques. The DSLAM creates a network similar to a LAN, but not subject to Ethernet distance limits, thus providing an Internet connection for the subscribers.
Many different companies manufacture the DSLAM, POTS splitter shelf, or both. Oftentimes, through unintended or otherwise design, these products may be manufactured with some ports that are not enabled, thus requiring large users of these devices, such as large telephone companies to purchase additional units to meet the number of ports required by their customer demand. Also, some manufacturers may not want to always enable the ports on their competitor's high margin product, so that they can sell the high margin product themselves with ports enabled to communicate with their low margin products, such as the POTS splitters. Thus, interchangeability between these types of product may not exist, although a lower cost structure would be achieved if they were interchangeable. Further, if a large telephone company desired to lower its equipment costs by purchasing one of these devices from one manufacturer and another device from another manufacturer, it oftentimes may not do so.